The worldwide data contained on computer servers everywhere is compounding at an incredible rate. The world's data is growing up to 10× every 5 years and shows no sign of slowing down. 70 to 80 percent of the world's data is at risk of loss due to natural disaster and will continue to be vulnerable well into the future. The growth of data storage in many cases exceeds the growth rate of internet bandwidth causing a glut of data to typically remain wherever it's created resulting in a persistent vulnerability of the data. Data loss worldwide continues to be a problem despite the ability to stream data offsite or physically move data storage offsite for disaster protection. The hundreds of business which close every year do so as a result of lack of simple disaster planning before a fire, hurricane, earthquake or flood. Pervasive data loss from natural disaster can be dramatically reduced if the data storage device can withstand the elements of a typical natural disasters.
The invention disclosed herein will teach techniques to protect any common commercially available data storage device or server from natural disaster. In essence, this invention concerns creating the equivalent of a paper fire safe but for digital servers containing data. As most of the world's data is now digital, this invention is incredibly important for the protection of vulnerable data everywhere. As will be taught in this disclosure, balancing fire protection, water protection, heat dissipation and cost are critical to creating a viable solution for today's data storage requirements. Small businesses, government offices and remote enterprise offices everywhere will benefit from near zero data loss and significant cost savings from this invention.
Servers contain critical data including but not limited to databases, photos, surveillance video, business data and/or electronic records. Typically, server data is actively being modified making data backup and disaster protection complicated, as synchronous replication to a second location can be technically difficult and expensive. Two synchronous servers, connected to the same network but located geographically far apart, will be delayed by a minimum time equal to the distance between the servers divided by the speed of light. As a consequence, synchronous servers may be low performing and slow to react from an end user's point of view.
Asynchronous replication is the often deployed to increase performance and improve the experience to the end user. The downside of this is that data on the server is left vulnerable to natural disaster for the time it takes to back it up over the Internet or physically move it offsite away from the main data storage location. This vulnerability window can vary from milliseconds to days or weeks of vulnerability to loss due to natural disaster such as earthquakes, hurricanes, fires or floods. The critical nature of the data combined with governmental regulations to protect and safeguard the data (such as the Healthcare Information Portability and Accountability Act, i.e. HIPAA) can create backup and disaster recovery issues for the owner of the data. Failure to protect the data and thus comply with government regulations can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. Failure to protect critical video surveillance data lost in a disaster such as arson fire can hinder investigations to how or who caused the fire as the evidence is consumed in the fire itself. Failure to protect precious family photos or video data can result in emotional losses that go beyond pure financial impacts.
Previous attempts to create disaster proof server cabinets, racks or enclosures have resulted in high cost, low performance, inefficient heat dissipation or high weight of the resulting enclosure. Current servers typically produce about 100 to 1000 watts of waste heat energy that must be dissipated in order to avoid overheating. Current servers are extremely vulnerable to natural disasters such as fires, floods, water damage and building collapse. Due to the wide variety of servers and server uses, there are hundreds of models available to perform both generic and task specific functions to modify, store or create useful data. A generic solution that can disaster proof a typical server yet manage the heat generation and minimize the cost of the total solution is clearly needed in the marketplace.
Previous designs have protected the stored data, but are not sufficient to protect the server device itself from being compromised during the disaster event. The water based fireproof insulation, such as gypsum or Portland cement, typically keeps the server environment cool to around 250° F. or 300° F. in a 2000° F. fire. Typical computer server devices can be safely stored or operate at around 160° F. without damage and subjecting the server to 200° F. or 300° F. can often damage the server as many components, especially the plastic components, cannot withstand excessive temperatures. Fireproof insulation formulas such as wax-based insulation or other endothermic chemical compounds used in the prior art that are designed to keep low temperatures during a fire may accidentally trigger an irreversible, one-time, endothermic reaction at temperatures lower than 200° F. The problem that arises for sensitive insulation during elevated shipping transportation temperatures or even normal usage in an elevated temperature environment, is that the insulation may be accidentally triggered to react without the end user's knowledge rendering the fire protection useless but undetected! In other words, if the insulation trigger temperature and the shipping/storage temperature are both 160° F. or close to 160° F., insufficient margin exists to prevent an accidental trigger of the endothermic insulation while still providing adequate temperatures during a fire disaster.
The prior art teaches one way of placing servers contained within the fireproof walls with refrigeration-heat exchanger systems such as Knieriem U.S. Pat. No. 6,632,995. By adding a refrigeration system to the fireproof cabinet, the system resolves the heat dissipation issue from the servers contained inside the enclosure while permitting the use of fireproof insulation that has sufficient margin over accidental endothermic reactions during shipping or storage. The repercussions from these design configurations is that the refrigeration unit must add essentially an equal amount of cooling power to the servers that produce a given amount of heat energy. In other words, the refrigeration unit must extract 1000 W of energy if the server requires 1000 W of power to operate. Combined with the typical inefficiencies of refrigeration, it is required that the resultant combination must use 2500 W of energy to protect a server that requires 1000 W of power!
In addition to the power penalty the prior art requires to operate, the refrigeration unit requires additional complexity, cost and weight that makes such systems
impractical for all but the largest businesses and government data storage installations.